Toyota too takes recall route

OUR CORRESPONDENT

New Delhi, April 9: A day after reports indicated that Maruti might recall over one lakh units of the Dzire, Toyota decided to recall 44,989 units of the Innova manufactured between February 2005 and December 2008 as part of a global recall of over 6 million vehicles by the Japanese car major.

The global recall across over 25 models is to fix faults in the steering and seats, the company said in a statement. It is one of the largest recalls to date in the global auto industry.

In Innova, an error was discovered in the spiral cable mounted on the steering wheel. “This error will lead to continuous illumination of an airbag warning lamp on the instrument cluster giving prior indication of a problem to the customer. In addition, the driver’s airbag may get deactivated,” the company said.

The company added that the repairs are expected to be carried out in around an hour’s time.

“Toyota is currently working on obtaining the necessary replacement parts. Once the replacement parts are available, customers will be contacted by the authorised Toyota dealers. The vehicle will then be repaired free of cost,” it said in a statement.

In February, Toyota had recalled 167 units of the Prius hybrid cars in India as part of a global recall to rectify a software error that would affect 1.9 million units.

Last year, Toyota had recalled 1,100 units of the diesel variant of its sedan Corolla Altis in India because of a faulty drive shaft. It had also recalled another batch of the Corolla in India to rectify defective airbags as part of a global recall of 17.3 lakh vehicles.

In 2011, Toyota had recalled 41,000 units of its sedan Etios and small car Liva in India to replace a faulty inlet pipe to the fuel tank.

Allaying fears

Meanwhile, Toyota said it was not aware of any crashes or injuries caused by the glitches, which were found in models, including the RAV4 and Yaris subcompact.

The car maker said faults were also found in the Pontiac Vibe and the Subaru Trezia, two models the auto maker built for General Motors and Fuji Heavy Industries.

The company did not say how much the recalls would cost, and it was not clear if the faults stemmed from Toyota’s suppliers or its manufacturing process.

The move by Toyota to announce five different recalls on a single day from Tokyo comes as major auto makers face increasing scrutiny in the US on how quickly they take preventive safety action and share information with regulators and the public.

Toyota agreed last month to pay $1.2 billion to the US government for withholding information related to unintended acceleration in its vehicles.

That safety crisis had caused Toyota to recall more than 9 million vehicles.